atom is a free, open source orchestration & scheduling project written in Python and released under AGPL-3.0. It has 899 GitHub stars, 94 forks and 2 open issues, and was last pushed 15 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #92 of 110 tracked projects in Orchestration & Scheduling, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

ATOM Platform

The governed agent platform — autonomy, earned.

Atom Platform

88% of AI agent pilots never reach production.* Atom is built for the other path.

*Industry figure (Turion 2026). Atom makes no claims about its own deployments.

License CI Tests Governance Python Stars


What is Atom?

Atom is an open-source, self-hosted AI agent workforce — a team of specialty agents (sales, support, finance, engineering) that your people delegate to in plain language. Where other platforms sell agent capability, Atom sells agent accountability: autonomy that is earned through verified outcomes, executed inside a deterministic safety net, on your hardware.

Agents that earn trust, not assume it. Atom's agents don't just respond to commands — they operate autonomously within governed boundaries, handling routine work end-to-end. Every agent starts as a supervised intern and graduates through a 4-tier maturity model (STUDENT → INTERN → SUPERVISED → AUTONOMOUS) only after verified successful runs — 10/25/50 episodes, outcome-checked, not self-reported.

Verified outcomes, not self-report. Every mutating action is re-derived against your system of record by an independent postcondition oracle (on by default), and confidence is split into self-reported vs externally verified. An agent that says "done" is checked, not believed. A prompt-injected agent at any tier acts at that tier's scoped blast radius — bounded by a default-on sandbox layer: filesystem scope, tool whitelist, tripwires, resource caps, kill-run, egress allowlist, full provenance audit. 0.027ms P99 per check.

Your data stays yours. Workflow data, agent state, and memory live on your infrastructure — embedded store, no cloud required. LLM inference uses your own API keys (BYOK, encrypted at rest) — or local models (Ollama first-class, or any local OpenAI-compatible server: LM Studio, vLLM, llama.cpp server) for fully private deployments. EU AI Act data-governance obligations (Aug 2026)? Designed for, not retrofitted.

Free edition, full features (AGPL v3): everything in this repository — every agent, integration, and governance feature — is free and open source. Keys you configure in .env are treated as BYOK and are never gated by plans or tiers. Commercial/managed editions run this same code on the client's own infrastructure; there is no closed-source "pro" build.

💰 Budget-friendly AI agents: OpenCode Go subscription (~90% savings vs pay-per-token) — one $10/mo key unlocks general-purpose models (DeepSeek V4, Kimi K3, GLM 5.2, MiniMax M3, Qwen 3.7, Nemotron 3 Ultra, Grok 4.5) with full tool-calling & structured output — not just for coding, works for any agent workload. Setup guide →

No lock-in: 16+ LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Gemini, MiniMax, Groq…) with automatic cost-aware routing, fallback, and self-healing — every run makes the next run cheaper (learning router + caching tiers).

The vision: every employee gets a personal agent team that knows their workflows, remembers context across weeks, and autonomously handles the repetitive work — research, data entry, drafting, reconciliation — while governance keeps you in control. Not AI replacing humans: AI handling the work humans shouldn't be doing.


Receipts: 0.027ms P99 governance checks (repo benchmark) · 616k ops/s cached throughput · 69+ documented TDD hardening rounds (~1,100 fixes in the deep security sweep alone) · 85k+ test functions (84,737 across 2,759 files, verified Aug 2026). External stats sourced in docs/marketing/RESEARCH_NOTES.md; copy kit in COPY_README.md + POSITIONING.md.


💻 Quick Start

Clone to first governed workflow in ~10 minutes. Start small — one workflow, one integration, one approval gate.

git clone https://github.com/rush86999/atom.git && cd atom
make setup                 # one-shot dev bootstrap (venv, deps, .env, frontend)
make backend               # full backend on :8001
# in a second terminal:
make frontend              # Next.js UI on :3001

To use LLM features, set one key in backend/.env (or add via Settings > AI):

  • OPENCODE_API_KEY for low-cost subscription coding models (~90% savings, recommended) or
  • OPENAI_API_KEY / ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / DEEPSEEK_API_KEY / GOOGLE_API_KEY … or
  • ATOM_LOCAL_ONLY=true + OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1 for fully local

Expected result: open http://localhost:3001 → sign in as [email protected] (password in backend/logs/bootstrap_admin_password.txt) → describe a workflow in plain language and watch it build with an approval gate before anything ships.

Full Quick Start → · Docker → · DigitalOcean 1-Click →

Solo operator? Skip setup — import a pre-built personal starter (invoice chase, candidate pipeline, support triage), each with an approval gate so nothing sends without your OK: Personal → Team Playbook →


🚀 AI-Generated Workflow Automation

Describe the outcome. Atom builds and runs the workflow.

What you say What Atom delivers
"When a lead comes in HubSpot, research the company, score it, create an Asana task for the rep, and ping Slack" A governed, replayable workflow with Human-in-the-Loop approval gates
"Extract invoice data from Gmail PDFs, match against QuickBooks, flag discrepancies" End-to-end pipeline: Gmail → PDF OCR → QuickBooks reconciliation → Slack alert
"Monitor Zendesk tickets for sentiment, auto-escalate urgent ones, draft replies" Real-time triage agent with approval before send
"Generate a weekly sales report from Salesforce, format in Excel, email the team" Scheduled workflow: SOQL query → formula-evaluated Excel → Office 365 send

Why it's different from Zapier/Make/n8n:

  • Agents, not just steps — Agents reason (not just execute): they research, decide, retry, and self-correct
  • Governance built-in — Maturity gates, HITL approval, audit trail, sandbox isolation
  • Self-hosted & private — Your data, your keys, your infrastructure
  • Office-native — Real Excel/Word/PPTX with formula evaluation, live Canvas co-editing
  • Agent-authored — You can chat with an agent to build/modify workflows (no drag-and-drop required)

Workflow Automation Guide → · Quick Start →


⚡ The AI Agent Landscape — Where Atom Fits

🧵 Consumer Assistants 🧰 Developer Frameworks 🏢 Enterprise Workforce
Examples ChatGPT, Claude, Notion AI, Copilot, Perplexity LangGraph, AutoGPT, CrewAI, AutoGen Atom
Interaction Single chat, reactive only Code-first, build-your-own Delegate to agent teammates in plain language
Data & hosting Cloud-only Self-hosted; bring your own integrations Self-hosted + 46+ native business integrations
Governance None DIY Governed by design

Atom is the only open-source platform that delivers:

  • Enterprise governance (maturity tiers, HITL, audit) — without vendor lock-in
  • Agents that know when to ask — autonomy earned per action type from verified track records, auto-revoked on regression; governed agent orgs with delegation contracts & privilege leases
  • Self-hosted privacy — your data, your keys, your infrastructure
  • Autonomous agent teammates — agents that work with your people, not just for them
  • Agent-authored workflows — chat to build, no drag-and-drop
  • Office/Canvas native — real Excel formulas, live co-editing
  • 46+ business integrations — Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Jira, Stripe, QuickBooks…

📊 Comparisons

Alternative Focus Key Difference Deep Dive
Hermes Agent (Nous Research) Personal coding/productivity assistant Single-agent, no governance, no integrations, no s

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is atom free to use?

atom is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does atom do?

Atom Agent, Open-Source Governed AI Agent Platform for Self-Hosted Automation

What is atom written in?

atom is primarily written in Python. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/rush86999/atom, and it has 899 GitHub stars.